CD Details

Entertainment Reviews:

"...any hardships you must endure to obtain a copy are well worth the pure enjoyment this album provides..."

Down Beat - 11/96, p.61

5 Stars - Excellent - "Masterpiece. Period...."

Record Collector (magazine) - p.106

5 stars out of 5 -- "Combining a pent-up energy with gentle arpeggios, his sound always locates itself around a powerfully eddying undercurrent."

Tracks:

1.The Driving Of The Year Nail

2.The Last Of The Arkansas Greyhounds

3.Ojo

4.Crow River Waltz

5.The Sailor's Grave On The Prairie

6.Vaseline Machine Gun

7.Jack Fig

8.Watermelon

9.Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring

10.The Fisherman

11.The Tennessee Toad

12.Busted Bicycle

13.The Brain Of The Purple Mountain

14.Coolidge Rising

Song previews provided courtesy of iTunes

Product Description:

Solo performer: Leo Kottke (acoustic 6 & 12-string guitars).

Recorded in 1969. Originally released on Takoma (1024). Includes liner notes by Mark Humphrey and original release liner notes by Leo Kottke.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Solo performer: Leo Kottke (acoustic 6 & 12-string guitars).

Recorded in 1969. Originally released on Takoma (1024).

With the 1969 release of 6-AND 12 STRING GUITAR, Leo Kottke established his pre-eminence as a guitar virtuoso and composer of quirky, pop-inflected pieces. Harmonically adventurous and technically dazzling, this album showcases Kottke's penchant for infusing traditional elements of folk guitar with more modern, even impressionistic harmony and tonality. Kottke inspired a revolution in acoustic guitar playing, and this record provided the opening volley.

"The Driving of the Year Nail" starts things off with a relentless fingerpicked chug, featuring splashes of open harmonics executed with the delicacy of a ballerina. Kottke proceeds to combine the familiar with the strange--each of these brief pieces (around three minutes and under) has the effect of being simultaneously charming, and a little twisted. For example, "Vaseline Machine Gun" starts with "Taps" played with a bottleneck slide, then morphs into a thumb-and-slide frenzy. Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" is the exception, given a straight and loving reading on six-string guitar. This is pure steel-string joy, with liberal doses of irony and ecstasy.